July 3, 2012

Money is pretty strange, especially the more you really think about
it. What makes people willing to hand over things like DVDs, steaks,
and churros in exchange for a piece of paper with ridiculous little pictures and numbers all over it? Why would anyone trade a delicious arrachera
taco, say, for a grubby little piece of metal with an eagle stamped
into it? Why do sane people accept these transactions as reasonable,
let alone desirable? Well, there are of course a lot of reasons behind
these kinds of decisions, including everything from the political power
of states to a kind of trust that exists within a community of users.
One question that always gets me thinking is this: what exactly upholds
the value of money? State power? Trust? The symbolic meanings that
people attach to money? Habit? A big global conspiracy? All of the
above!?!*

I have been working in Mexico off and on since around 2007, and
during that time I have had a few interesting run-ins with this thing we
call money. Many of these experiences point to one particularly
intriguing fact: the value of money is anything but stable. Of course,
we all know that. Markets shift, currencies rise and fall. Inflation
happens. The value of money changes all the time, right? Yes, it
does. But what I am talking about is how money that is supposedly
stable at larger levels can change value depending on specific social
situations. So values shift in the macro sense, but also in micro, very
quotidian senses as well. And the reasons for those micro fluctuations
of value are many. In short, when it comes to the actual value of
money, social context matters. A few examples: